Best Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

Virtual Private Servers (VPS) are a great way to scale your site as your traffic grows. A VPS also provides you far more control and reliability than a shared host but comes at a higher cost and requires more technical knowledge to maintain going forward.

As you compare VPS providers, you want to make sure you’re getting a big enough server to handle your traffic but you don’t want to spend more than you need to. The biggest considerations are how much CPU, RAM and disk space you need.

For Developers: DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a great VPS that I’ve used (and still use) and can highly recommend their stability and speed. They also let you deploy your VPS to a number of different regions – San Francisco, Toronto, New York City, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Singapore. This gives a lot of flexibility and lets you pick a region where your customers/users are to make sure they have the fewest network hops to make when accessing your site. As far as pricing, they do hourly pricing but they typically show the monthly prices for simplicity. And speaking of simplicity, they offer a number of one-click applications that you can instantly deploy – Cassandra, Discourse, Django, Docker, Dokku, Drone, Drupal, Elixir, ELK, Ghost, GitLab, Horizon, Joomla, LAMP, LEMP, Magento, MEAN, MediaWiki, MongoDB, Node.js, ownCloud, Redis, Redmine, Ruby on Rails and WordPress. I’m pretty sure most of those things sound like a foreign language but don’t worry, if you needed it, you would have already heard it by now. As far as pricing, DigitalOcean is extremely competitive and ranges from $5 a month for a basic 1 Core Processor, 512MB RAM, 20GB SSD and 1TB Transfer all the way up to $640 a month for a 20 Core Processor, 64 GB RAM, 640GB SSD and 9TB Transfer. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably looking at the $5 plan and maybe the $10 plan if need more RAM and disk space.

For a Cheap VPS: 1&1

I have used 1&1 for shared hosting in the past and can say they are a decent web host. And if you’re looking for a cheap option, 1&1 provides a lot for a very little price. At $4.99 a month, you get a 1 Core Processor, 512MB RAM, 30GB SSD and unlimited transfer/traffic. This is a pretty amazing deal and if you’re a first-time VPS user, this is a great starting point. And if you are a little unsure about a VPS, 1&1 gives you a 30-day trial after you sign-up. This is a great way to try out a VPS – everything from connecting to, uploading files, setting up your website and finally launching your site.